


Clinical Observations

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janet Fraiser, physician and friend, would always have their backs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clinical Observations

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Jack/Daniel Hugathon 2012

As epiphanies go, it wasn’t he most earth-shattering. It did give Janet considerable pause for thought, though.  
  
Just a few months into her posting to Cheyenne Mountain, she realized she was watching Colonel Jack O’Neill rather more closely than she was observing anyone else. He fascinated her. He was tactile, particularly with his team, which gave the impression of openness. In fact, he was one of the most closed-off, emotionally reticent men she’d ever come across, and it was that contradiction that drew and intrigued her.  
  
As a woman, she found him attractive; as his physician, she found him challenging. He’d bitch and whine until she let him out of her infirmary if he was ever ill or injured, but he’d haunt the place and refuse point-blank to budge if one his team was a patient of hers.  
  
He was maddening. Infuriating, sometimes, but she got where he was coming from and they developed a kind of unspoken mutual understanding based on unspoken mutual respect. She’d gotten another insight into Jack O’Neill this morning. SG-1 had returned from a mission that had seen them have to leave the planet in a hurry. Consequently, their emergence from the wormhole had been equally hurried and Sam had taken a swan dive before hitting the ramp and landing awkwardly on her right arm.  
  
Captain Carter had bitten her lip and insisted she was okay to walk to the infirmary, and all the while the color drained from her face until it matched the gray of the concrete walls. Janet watched the Colonel shepherd her along without appearing to shepherd her at all. And, as they reached the infirmary, he pulled her into a careful, one-armed half-hug and told her gruffly to “do as the Doc says.”  
  
It was a moment, there and gone, but it told Janet a hell of a lot about the command style of Jack O’Neill and why those who served under him would follow him through fire. She’d heard the stories of the men’s devotion from Ferretti, among others. She believed them without question.  
  
Janet would fix Sam up in no time, but that almost-hug was probably the best medicine a young airwoman, finding her feet with the program and keen to please her CO, could have.  
  
>>>>  
  
Jack O’Neill occasionally hugged Teal’c, but in an entirely different way to how he hugged Carter. It was all very manly. The warrior bond had been there from the beginning, Janet noted, but the friendship came later, and, with it, the displays of affection moved from hearty slaps on the back to restrained half-hugs that sometimes included a hand on the neck or a squeeze of the shoulder.  
  
There was a huge amount of mutual respect and both would probably die before admitting the reassurance and gratification they gained from those rare moments.  
  
Janet was kind of moved by their relationship. She would, however, kill anyone who dared to suggest that might be the case. She was as tough as nails.  
  
>>>>  
  
The way Jack hugged Cassie broke Janet’s heart a little.

  
He could never deny the young girl the comfort she sought in his arms but it came at a cost to him, and it was that pain that Janet found so hard to witness.  
  
Cassie was a huge fan of Jack O’Neill, especially after he gave her a dog, which Cassie had called, naturally enough, Dog. That gift had cemented the deal. She’d liked Jack before but she loved him now (because she loved Dog) and was always hugely excited when Jack came to visit. Cassie, mourning so many losses and eager for love and affection, always threw herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist and hugging the stuffing out of him. Janet’s pleas of, “Hey, let him at least get in the door, Cass” always fell on deaf ears.  
  
Jack, for his part, bent down and placed gentle hands on Cassie’s back, allowing her to snuggle in, but Janet could see that Jack always held a part of himself in reserve. He couldn’t seem to allow himself to take a full measure of delight in the shared embrace. It didn’t take the likes of MacKenzie to figure out why. Jack longed for his lost son. Even now, his arms ached for the want of him. Cassie wasn’t Charlie. No one would ever be Charlie. Keeping some distance was Jack’s way of coping but Cassie would never know that. All she knew was that Jack was there, his strong arms holding her safe, his smile lighting up her world, his jokes making her laugh.  
  
Still. Janet’s heart broke that little bit each time.  
  
>>>>  
  
Jack hugged Daniel a lot.  
  
One never to be forgotten time, he hugged him in a full-body embrace in front of the entire SGC. Of course, Daniel had just returned from the dead and Jack wasn’t the only one to throw arms around him in relieved delight. But there was a special quality to that hug and the shining eyes, wide smile and use of a nickname that went with it.  
  
The moment passed into legend and sparked a great deal of speculation about the unlikely friendship between the military man and the civilian. So Janet began to watch Jack with Daniel; never salaciously, never voyeuristically, but with a growing sense of protectiveness.  
  
Jack O’Neill, who rarely reached out to anyone, reached out more and more to Daniel Jackson. And Daniel Jackson, who rarely let anyone reach out to him and seldom sought comfort from others, allowed Jack O’Neill to touch and hug him with apparent equanimity.  
  
Over the years, Janet came to realize that the two men where halves of a very complex whole. They had both lost too much and Janet could not bear to think what would happen to either of them should one be permanently lost to the other.  
  
One evening, shortly after Daniel returned to SG-1 after his year away, a reluctant Daniel had been hustled in to see her by Jack.  
  
“He won’t admit it but he’s having bad headaches and dizzy spells,” Jack said, pushing Daniel firmly onto the bed.  
  
“He’s exaggerating,” Daniel said.   
  
He wasn’t.  
  
Janet ran a series of tests, posited some theories on the effects on the body of ascension and descension, prescribed some painkillers and told Daniel to rest for the night. There would be on reprieve, no laptop or books, just peace and quiet. Jack shooed a concerned Sam and Teal’c away after a brief visit but showed no signs of leaving himself, despite Janet’s finest patented death glare. She decided to give him some leeway; Daniel probably needed Jack around as much as Jack seemed to need to around Daniel.  
  
Janet was making her way back to her office when she heard voices talking softly by Daniel’s bed. Daniel, half dressed in scrubs, was pulling on his jacket and obviously planning to make a break for it.   
  
Janet paused by the infirmary entrance, anxious not to intrude. She couldn’t quite make out what was being said – the bed was at the far end of the room – but Jack was clearly countering Daniel’s every argument in a measured and reasonable manner, which seemed to ramp up Daniel’s agitation even more.  
After a face-to-face stand-off that seemed to go on forever, Daniel finally threw up his hands in surrender, shoulders slumping. Jack whispered something, trying to a coax a smile, which he eventually did. And then he pulled Daniel into a long, close hug, one arm around his waist, the other resting on the back of his head.  
  
It was the thumb that did it. It brushed slowly against Daniel’s neck, over and over, in a gesture that was unmistakably intimate. Janet doubted Jack even realized he was doing it but there was no doubt that Daniel was comforted by it. There was also no doubt about what it meant.  
  
As Janet moved away from the infirmary entrance, she fancied that she felt Jack’s eyes on her, but she would not meet his gaze. She would not make him go through that.  
  
>>>>  
  
Ten minutes later, Janet found out what it was like to be hugged by Jack.  
  
He knocked on the doorjamb of her office and said quietly, “He’s staying. He’ll probably be asleep in five. Stubborn bastard.”  
Janet nodded as she placed a file in the cabinet and and pushed the drawer closed.  
  
Without warning, Jack pulled her into a short, gentle hug. He felt solid and warm, a place of safety. “Thanks,” he whispered against her ear. Then, with a tentative smile, he was gone.  
  
Janet didn’t need to ask what he was thanking her for. She was their doctor and their friend. She wouldn’t ask and she wouldn’t tell, but she would always have their backs.  
  
ends


End file.
